The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.

When you put learning at the center of everything you do, you grow your career, your leadership, your relationships, and your joy and fulfillment in life. But even for people who are naturally curious and interested in solving problems, being an effective learner who can turn their learning into action takes insight and practice. With infectious enthusiasm and optimism, David Novak shows you how to master active learning.

Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices. But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us?

We all spend a lot of energy trying to get people to listen to us, and despite our best efforts, we often fail. But what if the secret to influencing others was to demonstrate acceptance? Enter validation—communication where one accepts and sees the validity in another person’s experience. Research on validation shows that it has profound effects, from improving relationships and de-escalating conflicts to increasing one’s influence and self-compassion.

Divided into four sections - Status, Spontaneity, Narrative Skills, and Masks and Trance - and arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the audiobook sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an audiobook of ideas and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

In Building a StoryBrand 2.0, Donald Miller not only deepens his teaching on how to use his seven universal story elements—he'll provide you with one of the most powerful and cutting-edge tools to help with your brand messaging efficacy and output. The StoryBrand framework is a proven process that has helped thousands of companies engage with their existing customers, giving them the ultimate competitive advantage. Now you can have access to the perfected version, making it more essential.

In this new Jon Gordon fable The 7 Commitments of Great Teams, Tim is struggling to lead his team at work: projects are falling flat, morale is low, and his leadership ability is in question from higher-ups. In a moment of heartbreak, he talks to his old college coach, who is on his deathbed, and is reminded of a simple yet perspective-shifting adage from the past: "teammates are forever."

Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.

Since its release in 2006, Financial Intelligence has become a favorite among managers who need a guided tour through the numbers, helping them to understand not only what the numbers really mean but also why they matter. This new, completely updated edition brings the numbers up to date and continues to teach the basics of finance to managers who need to use financial data to drive their business.

In Reset, Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points”: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.

In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger shares illuminating stories and compelling research on the power of inquiry. Drawn from the insights and expertise of psychologists, innovators, effective leaders and some of the world's foremost creative thinkers, he presents the essential questions readers need to make the best choices when it truly counts, with a particular focus in four key areas: decision-making, creativity, leadership and relationships.

In Joel's Schwartzberg's 10-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across - one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail - is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

Life isn’t linear, and yet we try to mold it around linear goals: four-year college degrees, ten-year career plans, thirty-year mortgages. What if instead we approached life as a giant playground for experimentation? Based on ancestral philosophy and the latest scientific research, Tiny Experiments provides a desperately needed reframing: Uncertainty can be a state of expanded possibility and a space for metamorphosis. Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff reveals that all you need is an experimental mindset to turn challenges into self-discovery and doubt into opportunity.

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians - but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life.

Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between sealing the deal or losing the account, getting a promotion, or getting a pink slip. It's essential to be pitch perfect - to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language - both verbal and nonverbal.

We are constantly told to make the most of our time, to work harder, to stop procrastinating. But what if all that advice was wrong, and letting the brain rest, and the mind wander, could improve our lives? In this book, Dr. Joseph Jebelli shows listeners the way to happier, healthier, and more balanced lives in a deeply researched and entertaining guide to combat overwork and burnout. Through a blend of science, personal stories, and practical, actionable tips, Dr. Jebelli proves that the brain's "default network" turns itself on when we turn off the constant need to always do and achieve.

From a renowned psychiatrist comes the first book to explore the otrovert personality—someone who feels like an outsider in any group, regardless of its members—revealing all the advantages of being an otrovert and ways they contribute to the world. The Gift of Not Belonging urges otroverts to embrace their unique gifts, and equips them with the knowledge and tools to thrive in a communal world.

At once a practical guide and a heartfelt manifesto, this groundbreaking book challenges us to rethink our approach to listening and in doing so, transform our lives from the inside out. Whether listeners seek to strengthen their empathy, boost their performance at work, or foster genuine understanding across cultural, political, and generational divides, Deep Listening provides the tools and inspiration to unlock the power of lasting, meaningful connections.

The groundbreaking science of how and why we talk, and how this ability impacts every area of our lives.

Too many of us are living on autopilot. We believe we’re too old, too busy, or too inexperienced to go after what we really want. Shannon Watts has a message for you: Think again. If you are ready to stand tall in your greatness, Fired Up invites you to shatter your self-imposed limitations and unleash your potential so you can finally start living the life you deserve.

What does the rapid rise and astonishing rate of improvement of AI mean for brands in the next five years? Listen to what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told authors Adam Brotman and Andy Sack when he met them: "It will mean that 95 percent of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, and at almost no cost be handled by AI. No problem." Upon hearing that astonishing statement, the authors began a journey of discovery to understand what the transition to an AI first world would mean.

In Unplug, Richard Simon lays out a plan to detox from your phone, including different breakup styles, things to do with your newfound time, lightly reintegrating a smartphone into your life, and finally, helping others quit. These tips and strategies are interspersed with success stories, including Simon’s own story of turning off his phone for a whole year.

Marketing experts and professors Annie Wilson and Ryan Hamilton, through dozens of cases, provide insight into how brands can drive growth by attracting new segments without alienating or losing their current customers. They also explore how brands can more strategically select and manage customer segments to drive high velocity growth and symbiotic segment relationships.

In today’s fast-moving world, the difference between success and failure is not in what you know but in what you do with what you know. Lean Learning equips you with the tools to do just that, propelling you towards your goals with greater efficiency, purpose, and results. Pat Flynn, a seasoned and serial entrepreneur and business mentor to millions, draws on his own experiences and of those who have successfully implemented his techniques. Lean Learning isn’t just about absorbing information efficiently—it’s about reshaping your approach to knowledge altogether.

You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement. Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius—a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law—has run its course.

In The Science of Scaling, organizational psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and Blake Erickson, co-founders of Scaling.com, reveal a revolutionary framework that helps companies scale bigger and faster than they ever thought possible. In fact, companies that apply this framework routinely grow 10-100x within just three years.

Life is nothing other than a series of transitions. Whether you’re graduating from college and trying to decide what’s next, coping with divorce, putting the pieces back together after a death or a diagnosis, moving to a new city, or thinking about leaving one career path for another, these transitions—planned or unplanned—are an inevitable part of life.

Every time you communicate, you're trying to move someone to feel, think, and act. You're trying to make a point. But very few communicators—regardless of their purpose or position—know their points, have true points, or even understand what a point is, rendering themselves pointless. In this expanded second edition of the bestselling Get to the Point!, Joel Schwartzberg draws on his decades of experience as a strategic communications executive and public speaking coach to deliver a masterclass in high-impact communications for the digital age.

Filled with empowering, easy-to-follow tips for crafting stories that forge lasting bonds with friends, family, and colleagues alike, this book will help you connect authentically with the world around you and unleash the power of story in your life.